Sweets and Desserts in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Palm sugar is the backbone of Khmer sweets, and in Siem Reap the difference between the pale, caramel-scented discs from Kampong Speu and the industrial version is easy to taste. It turns up melted inside num plae ai, small rice-flour balls rolled in fresh grated coconut and sold warm from market trays, and folded into sangkhya lapov, a coconut custard steamed inside a whole pumpkin and cut into wedges. Neither is sweet in the Western sense. They are gently sugared, heavily coconut, and usually eaten mid-afternoon rather than after dinner.
Khmer sweets to look for
Num plae ai and sangkhya lapov are the two to start with. Kralan, sticky rice with black beans and coconut milk roasted inside a bamboo tube then peeled like a banana, is sold at roadside stands on the routes north towards Kulen. Num kong is the Khmer doughnut, a rice-flour ring glazed with palm sugar. Chek ktis is banana simmered in coconut cream and served warm. Cha houy teuk piles jelly, coconut milk and crushed ice into a plastic cup for well under a dollar. Psar Chas in the morning and the Road 60 night market after five are the two reliable places to find all of them.
Cafes, bakeries and ice cream
The Blue Pumpkin on Pokambor Avenue, by the river, is the long-standing institution: an all-white upstairs lounge with bed-like seating and a counter of ice creams in local flavours such as ginger, palm sugar and passion fruit. Gelato Lab does a smaller, sharper Italian-style version near the Old Market. Kandal Village covers the coffee-and-cake end, with Little Red Fox Espresso the best known of them, while Brown Coffee at the Heritage Walk mall is the Cambodian chain most people default to. Afternoon tea at Raffles or Park Hyatt is the splurge and usually needs booking a day ahead.